Vo Nguyen Giap

Vo Nguyen Giap (25 August 1911-4 October 2013) was a Vietnamese guerrilla and army commander whose victories during the First Indochina War and the Vietnam War made him famous as one of the greatest military strategists of the 20th century.

Biography
Vo Nguyen Giap was born in Le Thuy, French Indochina in 1911. Giap's military career began during World War II: as a member of the Viet Minh, a communist-led nationalist movement, he organized guerrillas who fought the Japanese occupation forces in northern Vietnam. When Japan surrendered to the Allies in 1945, Viet Minh leader Ho Chi Minh declared Vietnam independent. Giap became a minister in Ho's government. However, France was determined to regain its colony. After a breakdown in negotiations, in December 1946, Giap ordered his Viet Minh forces to attack the French, "destroy the invaders and save the nation." But after fighting in Hanoi, French rule was restored.

Based in the mountainous Viet Bac region, Giap patiently built up his guerrilla force. He established a main body, eventually numbering around 125,000 full-time soldiers under his direct command, while regional guerrilla forces and part-time militia - villagers who turned into guerrilla fighters after dark - operated throughout Vietnam. Although he had read military history and studied the theories of Mao Zedong, Giap had much to learn. His first substantial offensive operations, which led to the fall of a major French base at Lang Son in October 1950, were easy triumphs over exposed outposts. The following year, fielding 10,000-20,000 men at a time in frontal attacks on the Red River Delta, Giap was roundly defeated by well-marshaled French firepower. He drew the right conclusion: that he would have to lure the French away from their positions around the major cities and inflict military setbacks that would erode their political will to fight. Giap tried the technique at Hoa Binh in late 1951 to early 1952, harassing supply lines to the base so effectively that the French had to withdraw. He then threatened outposts in Laos, provoking the French into establishing a base at Dien Bien Phu, near the Laotian border. The major Viet Minh victory that followed ended French colonial rule and made Giap famous.

Fighting the South
In the Communist state established in North Vietnam from 1954, Giap was defense minister, commander-in-chief of the army, and a member of the ruling politburo. In 1959, the politburo decided to launch a guerrilla war in South Vietnam. Personnel from North Vietnam were infiltrated into the South to organize an insurrection. Giap set up the supply route known as the Ho Chi Minh Trail through Laos and Cambodia to feed the guerrilla war.

By 1964, the South Vietnamese guerrillas - known to the Americans as the Viet Cong - were so successful that Giap began sending North Vietnamese Army (NVA) infantry along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, anticipating a swift victory. But the US's huge commitment of forces to South Vietnam from 1965 - as part of a global anti-communism campaign - made him rethink. At first, Giap reacted cautiously to the aggressive American presence, mostly seeking to preserve his own forces by evasive action. In 1968, however, he judged the time right for a major blow that would break his enemy's will to fight. NVA troops besieged the US Marine Corps base at Khe Sanh in a manner reminiscent of Dien Bien Phu, while the Tet Offensive wa sunleashed on South Vietnamese cities. In military terms, both Tet and Khe Sanh proved very costly defeats for Giap, but even so they strained American morale to the breaking point. This led directly to negotiations that would result in a complete US withdrawal from Vietnam in 1973.

A nation reunited
Giap's final act as North Vietnam's commander-in-chief was the launch of a conventional invasion of South Vietnam in 1972. The NVA's Easter Offensive showed all Giap's usual tanet for organization and logistical support of large-scale operations, but he fatally underestimated the impact of air power on conventional forces without air cover. Nor did the South Vietnamese Army collapse under pressure, as he had hoped. After suffering massive losses, the NVA was fought to a standstill. Giap was no longer army commander-in-chief when NVA tanks finally rolled into Saigon in 1975, reuniting Vietnam and completing his life's work. He died in Hanoi in 2013 at the age of 102.